Sir Anthony Caro OM

Description

This sculpture represents a new development for Sculpture at Goodwood, as the Foundation has entered into partnership with both the artist and a structural engineer, Chris Wise, to produce a sizeable, one-fifth scale maquette for a fifteen-metre tower. Caro and Wise (a director of Expedition Engineering Limited) are working on another version, and it is possible that the two will be changed over at Goodwood from time to time, enabling both pieces to be tested against landscape, modified and developed, while funding for the large Tower is sought.

The Tower of Babel, which its builders intended should reach the heavens, is said to have had its origins in the ziggurat, a vast sacred edifice of brick that featured in the larger Sumerian cities of Mesopotamia. A staircase led from the ground to a temple at the summit. Anthony Caro's vast, open tower reflects these components. It is partly a development from his last monumental sculpture at Goodwood, Goodwood Steps (Spirals) 1994-96. The Goodwood Steps were first shown alongside ziggurat sculptures, towering forms made from wooden railway sleepers at Dean Clough, Halifax, Caro's first works on such an ambitious scale. His interest in combining the principles of architecture and sculpture in his work, as well as working in collaboration with others, has given rise to some of his most innovative sculptures. The stairways that invite the viewer to climb the Tower lead to pavilions. Standing back to view the work against the sky reveals a linear composition holding together these areas of sculptural incident. They may also be studied from within the general network of the sculpture that holds the structure firm. The distant view shows how Caro has offset these sculptural highlights, as the whole composition appears to be larger at the top than it does at its base, giving the feeling that it is freely drawn in space.